Daddy
by Ashabagawa
Summary: Despite all the help from his wife, Ariadne, Arthur sometimes finds being a Dad difficult. So Eames helps him out.
1. There Is No Monster Under Your Bed

"Daddy?" The voice is small and, through one sleepy eye, Arthur can just make out the shape of a small, pyjama-clad human silhouetted against the backdrop of the dark bedroom.

"Daddy?" The voice is back again, although this time accompanied by a sharp prod to the abdomen through the duvet. Arthur's reflexes are normally sublime, although there's something about this small finger that always seems to catch him at his most vulnerable.

"What, Luc?" His voice is croaky from sleep and his tone is one of resigned despair.

"There's a monster under my bed, Daddy."

"What?" At this time in the morning, his vocabulary is somewhat limited.

"There's a monster. Under my bed," Luc says slowly, as if talking to a very stupid person. He's used to having to explain everything simply to his father, who has trouble understanding the most fundamental of the situations his four-year old finds himself in. "I don't want it to eat me."

"There isn't a monster under your bed, Luc," Arthur's eyes are closed again.

"Yes there is," Luc says quickly, having been prepared for his father's denial. "It's purple, with lots and lots of teeth."

"How many?" Arthur is now slipping into slumber and Luc prods him again, jolting him awake with a sleepy grumble.

"I don't know how many," Luc replies, as if the question is stupid. "I didn't have time to count them all. I was scared."

"Well go back and count them."

"No. Can I get in with you and Mummy?"

"No. Not until you've counted its teeth."

"But it's scary,"

"Luc, there isn't a monster under your bed. It's not physically possible. I mean, according to practically every law of science under the sun," Arthur's eyes are open now and he's concentrating his full reserve of energy on boring his son. If there's anything Luc hates more than purple monsters with lots of teeth, it's physics. "...you can't fit a monster under a child's bed. It's impossible, I mean..." he trails off as the body of his four-year-old is levitated into the air.

This is strange.

He rolls over.

A pair of slender arms have reached over him and grasped Luc under the armpits, transporting him over the body of his father and into the arms of his very annoyed looking mother. Ariadne tucks Luc neatly into the space between them, where he smiles happily and snuggles his toes into the sheets.

"He wants comfort, Arthur. Not a maths lesson."

"It was physics, actually."

"Shut up."

He does.

He closes his eyes and the small, wriggling body next to him is pressed into his side, wedged like a toddler sandwich. A pair of icy, miniature feet find his shin and he yelps with shock, making the bed shake and, yet again, disturb his wife.

"What in the name of God," Ariadne grumbles. "is going on down there?"

A small giggle.

"Remove your feet from my leg, Luc, or I will remove them for you." The small feet retreat back into the cosiness of the covers, although Arthur knows it is only a matter of time before they find their mark again. Defenceless, he braces himself for the worst, screwing his eyes tight in the dark.

Soon he hears snores. There's definitely two sets – the measured, heavy breathing of Ariadne accompanied by Luc's irregular sniffles – and he relaxes again; the cold feet threat seems to have been eliminated. He settles into the pillow and relaxes his shoulders against the soft pillow.

_Creak. _

It's a small noise, but the years of training have left an impression on him and his shoulders suddenly tense, his eyes snapping open in the dark.

He waits a moment, but he hears nothing more besides the sleepy breathing of his family. He shuts his eyes again, anxious for sleep.

_Creak._

It's upstairs.

Carefully, without waking the small boy curled into his back, Arthur silently removes himself from the bedcovers, burying his feet deep within his slippers as he sits upright on the side of the bed.

He's not imagining it.

Someone's here. In the house. He stands, lifting up his pillow and extracting the Browning Automatic Pistol from underneath it as he does so.

The pillow's soft, but not that soft. Ariadne reckons sleeping on the hard metal of the gun is going to permanently damage his spine.

She's still asleep, an arm curled around her son.

Arthur creeps over to the open doorway, waiting for the sound.

_Creak._

He's through the door and out in the hallway in a second, the arm holding the gun snapping around the door in a flash.

The landing light is on. Ariadne always turns it off. Saving the Planet and all that.

_Creak. _

It's coming from Luc's bedroom.

Fear grips Arthur by the heart. His son is safe. He's with his mother.

Slowly, Arthur opens the door to his son's bedroom, the light spilling in through the open doorway. He's poised and ready to shoot anything that moves in the dark.

The thing under the bed doesn't exactly move, it sort of splurges out, groaning.

In a British accent.

"Turn the sodding light out. It's as bright as fuck."

Eames. The bastard.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Arthur exclaims, turning the main light on with absolutely no regard for Eames' request. Eames writhes for a moment in the bright light, cursing, like a particularly foul-mouthed Dracula exposed to sunlight. After a while, Eames stops writhing and braves the light, opening his eyes like a newborn puppy, his eyes puffy and bloodshot.

"What happened to you?" Arthur still stands in the doorway, shock paralysing every part of him except his mouth.

"Jack Daniels."

"You've never had problems with liquor before."

"That was before Celeste."

"Ah."

Arthur had met Celeste only once, but she'd left the sort of impression that engraved itself on the inside of a man's eyelids. Beautiful, yet with all of the tact and decorum of a blunt axe, Arthur and Ariadne had both agreed that she and Eames were meant to be – they could shout foul things at the guests on _The Jerry Springer Show_ together. But something had gone wrong – they didn't know what – and nowadays Eames seemed to smell more like a dishrag than an actual human being.

"But that's doesn't explain what you're doing under Luc's bed."

"What?"

"What are you doing under the bed?"

Eames stares wildly around him, patting the wooden floor with his palms.

"I'm under the bed," he says slowly, as if only just noticing which, Arthur realises, he probably is. "I thought I was in the guest room."

"No," Arthur replies. "You're in Luc's room. Come on. I'll find you a bed." Dragging his friend up from the floor by the arm, he escorts him along the corridor, pausing only when Eames takes a small detour along the way to land headfirst in the laundry basket.

Finally, Eames is lying sideways on the bed in the guestroom, while Arthur drags the sheets over him.

"How is he? Luc? I'm sorry if I scared the little man..." Eames' voice is croaky with fatigue.

"He'll be fine. Fear is character-building." Arthur smiles wryly down at his friend. "C'mon. Get some sleep. Big day tomorrow."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. You've got one hell of a hangover booked for about, hey, nine o' clock?"

Eames groans and Arthur sniggers.

"Goodnight, darling," Arthur says, mimicking his friend's usually cheerful tone.

"Fuck off."

Arthur closes the door behind him.

"Bitch," Eames mutters, though it's clearly audible through the door.

"Jerk," Arthur replies.

He stumbles, now more tired than ever, back to bed and to the pair of little cold feet that attach themselves to his leg.

But this time, he doesn't mind.


	2. Don't Eat the Beach

**A/N – Thanks for all of your lovely reviews! Due to your stupendous enthusiasm, I've decided to continue it. I don't really know how many chapters there'll be, but I'm thinking there'll be quite a few. Thanks again for your lovely words of encouragement and I hope you like this chapter – Ellen**

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><p>"No don't eat it, honey." Ariadne swats Luc's fistful of sand away from his mouth. Again. This is the fourth time he's tried to swallow it and she's wondering if maybe he's developed unnaturally sensitive taste buds – he's been putting everything in his mouth lately, as if to check it out before he uses it. "It's sand, sweetie," she adds. "It won't taste nice."<p>

It's ages since she came to the beach. It reminds her of being little and visiting the seaside with her parents and sister. The air tastes the same, salt mixed with sun and smiling.

Arthur is most definitely not smiling.

He's sitting, hot and grumpy, in the shadow of a large parasol. Suits aren't particularly practical for beachwear and so he's swapped his usual ensemble for something a little more suitable: a white, baggy shirt and the sort of board shorts that would normally make him cry. Ariadne bought them for him and laughed for about eight minutes when he first emerged from the bathroom wearing them, desperately trying to pretend everything was normal.

He has got a beer, though. It's not all bad. And Luc looks like he's having a good time, even though he looks like he's eating more sand than Ariadne is moulding into a sandcastle.

Ariadne swats his hand away again and he giggles, his little four-year-old laughter inaudible over the crash of the waves.

Arthur smiles. He'd do a lot more than wear hideous board-shorts to make that kid laugh.

"BEND YOUR KNEES!" It's Cobb, shouting at James as he gingerly tries to stand on his surfboard. Cobb's on the beach, sitting next to Arthur under the parasol, blissfully unaware of the fact he's just perforated at least one of his eardrums. Eames has swallowed an ice cube in shock and is now wincing as it slowly makes its way down his throat. "JAMES!" Oh, the shouting's not over. "BEND YOUR KNEES! FOR BALANCE!"

For a crazy second, Arthur considers ripping the sunglasses off Cobb's head and shoving them down his throat. But this is for only a second. And it is a very crazy second.

"I think he's probably heard you now," Eames says, having recovered from the unfortunate ice-cube-down-throat incident.

"Yeah…" Cobb leans back in his chair, obviously trying to relax, but Arthur can tell that behind his sunglasses, his eyes are still focused firmly on James.

"How's Phillipa?" Arthur asks. "Heard from her lately?"

"Yes, actually," Cobb replies, dragging his eyes away from his son. "She rang me last night. She's good. Still can't cook anything except omelette, but she's ok. I think her roommate's quite handy in the kitchen." Phillipa was at Princeton, studying Art History. Cobb obviously misses her.

"I remember her Chilli Con Carne." Eames is leaning back in his chair, his colourful Hawaiian shirt open, his eyes shut against the sun's rays. "It removed all the skin from my mouth with the heat."

"I remember your screams," Arthur sniggers. "Very masculine."

"Nice board-shorts."

This shuts him up.

"So how old is Luc?" Cobb asks, taking a swig from his beer.

"Four. He starts school in September."

"Speaking of which," Eames twists in his deckchair to face them, his expression deadly serious. "We need to check out his teacher."

"What?" Both Cobb and Arthur exclaim.

"She or he could be anybody. I want you to frisk them the moment you enter the classroom and," Eames draws breath, but only for a second. "I want you to send me the video footage of you doing it on your phone."

Arthur doesn't know whether to be pleased about Eames' concern and obvious protectiveness of his son or to be disturbed and worried for his friend's mental health. He thinks it would be easier to just agree, rather than ruin the day arguing.

"Ok. Fine," he says. "But you are crazy."

"Crazy and alive."

Arthur can't think of a comeback, so leans back in his chair and shuts his eyes. It's not so bad, the beach, he thinks as he scrunches his toes deep in the sand. It's almost peaceful. He can hear Luc and Ariadne laughing, the waves crashing on the rocks, James swearing as he falls off his board, Eames clicking his tongue annoyingly…so maybe not that peaceful.

But he likes it.

Cobb watches his friend lean back in his chair and close his eyes. Arthur's changed a lot in the last ten years and it would be stupid to think Ariadne had nothing to do with it. The Arthur currently reclining next to him on the beach seems centuries away from the brutal, snarky young man Cobb met all those years ago. That Arthur was good at his job because he wasn't scared of dying, as he had nothing to lose. This Arthur most certainly does.

Cobb watches Ariadne and Luc. Ariadne is wearing a floating summer dress and a big floppy hat that Luc seems intent on piling sand into the brim. Cobb remembers another woman sitting on a beach, her hands full of sand.

But that was a long time ago.

Ariadne glances up. Cobb waves and she waves back, grinning.

Cobb smiles. If there's anyone in the world that deserves to be happy, it's Ariadne.

He turns back to Arthur. Hair untidy, shirt stained with sand, sporting a pair of hideous board-shorts, his friend looks a mess. But somehow, in a way he never would have expected, Arthur suits mess.

"DAD!"

James is sprinting up the beach, gangly as only a sixteen-year-old boy can be – he seems to have been stretched this last year, with his arms and legs completely out of proportion with the rest of his body. His sandy hair flops over his eyes as he runs and, although the son now running towards him is really a young man, Cobb only sees the three-year-old boy, he very nearly was never going to see again.

"WHAT?"

Arthur's eyes jerk open. My god, those Cobbs can shout.

"I broke my shoes." James removes his wetsuit shoes and, not without a hint of pride, displays the large hole in them to his father.

"Why?"

"I didn't do it on purpose!"

"Oh. Do you want to borrow mine?"

"Nah. I'm tired."

"Hey, champ." Eames sits up. "How was it?"

"Great," James grins, his white teeth standing out against his tan. "I'm getting better."

"You looked like you were going fast," Arthur nodded over to the frothy, white waves of the sea.

"It felt fast. I fell off lots."

"We saw." Cobb replied, unable to keep the chuckle out of his voice. "There seemed to be more falling than surfing."

"Oh yeah?" James grinned. "Well how do you like this, old man?" He shakes his long, damp hair all over his father, soaking his face, and shirt.

Eames and Arthur laugh.

Aware of the fate he's just bought himself, James backs up, laughing. Cobb slowly advances, his shirt dripping onto the sand.

"You have no idea what you've just started, punk," Cobb says slowly, smiling, eyebrows raised.

"Oh yeah?" James executes a kind of dance move he must have seen in a movie. "Bring it."

Within a second, the both Cobbs are tearing across the beach, yelling and laughing.

Arthur and Eames watch them, laughing.

"He seems ok," Arthur says, as Cobb dives on top of James, pinning him to the sand.

"Yeah," Eames replies. "He does."

And Arthur realises that, although Cobb has gone through a lot, he really is ok. Arthur's ok too. In fact, he thinks as he takes another swig from his beer, he's more than ok.

As Eames would say, he's bloody marvellous.


	3. Lying Is Not Always Bad

**A/N - This one's a little shorter, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Hope you like it and thanks for all alerts, favourites, reviews etc. I really appreciate it - Ellen**

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><p>For the fourth time that week, Luc fell asleep in class.<p>

This wasn't the first time a child had fallen asleep in Mrs James' class. Truth be told, she was used to it – children under the age of five tend to tire easily – but she couldn't help thinking four times in one week was taking the biscuit. When she'd roused him and suggested he go to bed early that night, he simply replied, "But I'm helping Daddy."

Confused and preoccupied with the twenty-eight other children in the room, all demanding her attention, she'd dropped it, putting the strange response down to an overactive, four-year old imagination.

But then, it wasn't the first strange encounter she'd ever had with Luc.

On the first day of school, back in September, she'd first met the father. He was a banker, apparently, and he certainly looked the part, dressed in a crisp three-piece suit. He'd seemed polite enough, where it not for the fact that he'd insisted on frisking her the moment he entered the classroom and filming it on his mobile phone.

"I'm very sorry," he'd said, feeling inside the lining of her jacket. "I've been instructed to do this by my friend – and he wants photographic evidence," he added, nodding towards the phone now propped up on a copy of 'My First Encyclopaedia'.

That had been strange, but she'd got over that soon enough when, five seconds later, Jimmy Burkes nearly drowned himself in the paddling pool.

After pulling the screaming, failing and altogether very soggy child out of the water, she looked up to find the strange man gone and, in his place, a small dark-haired boy in a smart navy pullover and dress pants.

He was by no means the quietest child she'd ever taught, nor was he the loudest. Instead he always seemed to keep herself huddled within the comfortable range of children's faces that were easily forgotten.

But Luc was not a child easy to forget.

Less than a fortnight after the beginning of term, the family had disappeared for a few days, supposedly 'holidaying' somewhere with a name with more than eight syllables. In a fit of uncharacteristic nosiness, Mrs James considered googling the mysterious island that Luc's father claimed was somewhere off the coast of Mongolia, before realising she didn't know how to spell it.

Then she remembered Mongolia didn't even have a coast.

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><p>The engine of the black sedan purred the car glided down the smoothly tarmacked road. The English countryside rolls past, sheep glancing up just in time to watch the car zoom past them before stooping again to graze on the plush green grass, no less than a whole continent away from Mrs James' colourful classroom.<p>

"I messed up the thing about Mongolia," Arthur says as he pulls off the highway and drives down the narrow country lane. "I've just remembered. It's landlocked."

"Oh well," Eames says from the back seat, where he's playing snap with Luc. "She won't realise."

"I still don't get why we couldn't just tell her we had to go to a wedding or something," Ariadne said, winding down the window of the passenger side. "Kids have to miss school for all sorts of reasons, not always because their parents have to infiltrate someone's mind."

The men were quiet for a moment.

"It seemed neater," Arthur finally replied lamely. Eames snorted.

"Neater?" Ariadne asked, incredulously.

"Yeah. We don't know anyone getting married…"

"So? You lie practically every day of your life, Arthur. You lie for a living. Why couldn't you lie to her?"

"I don't know. She seemed…nice. In an old lady kind of way. She was wearing pearls and everything."

"Jesus Christ." Ariadne turns out of the window, shaking her head.

"So instead you told her we were going to Mongolia," Eames says, slowly.

"Yeah."

"Which we're not."

"No."

"Then you lied to her anyway, didn't you?"

"Well…yeah. But I felt bad doing it." Arthur squirms.

"You pathetic twat."

"Language!" Ariadne exclaims. "We don't say naughty words do we, Luc?"

"No, Mummy," Luc says, looking up from his snap cards.

"We don't say twat do we, Luc?"

"No, Mummy."

"What do we say instead?"

"Cockface." Luc replied, seemingly to burst with pride at pleasing his mother.

"That's right, sweetie. Daddy is a cockface."

"Hang on…" Arthur protests as Eames bursts into laughter in the back. Once recovered, Eames hi-fives Luc.

"Good one, Little Man." Completely confused, but pleased at the praise, Luc grins back.

"But seriously," Arthur says, turning off the road and onto a grit track. "You can't lie to that woman. Not very well anyway." He glances at Eames in the rear-view mirror. "Next time you can do it."

"Fine. I'll simply stun the woman into submission with my incredible good looks," Eames replied, leafing through his snap cards. He turns to Luc. "Won't I, Luc?"

Luc doesn't appear to have understood the question, however, as he replies with a simple, but confident, "Cockface!"

Now it's Arthur's turn to laugh.


End file.
